The House(s) of Fran_mart

When chatting on Wednesday with a friend about arrangements for a run on Friday he commented that the weather looked OK then but it was going to be a bit ordinary on Thursday.  Later on the Wednesday the TV weather showed a very nifty band of cloud heading right across Australia from Cyclone Rusty On Thursday morning I looked at the BoM forecast for this area on Thursday. Yep 50 - 100mm of rain is very ordinary!  The radar image ... ... suggests that 50mm is certainly possible, especially as the blue band wasn't moving quickly. We had finished our dog walk by 8am and picked the ripe tomatoes by 8:30 when the sprinkles started.  By 11:15 I had recorded 9mm of rain.  The radar image at that time suggested the Weather Gods had winged us ... .. but Robertson was going to get a top up!  I heard from Denis a little later in the day saying that it is Robbo Show this weekend and as might be expected it is pissing down! By 1630 the front appears to have passed us by ..

As the pin was pulled on the normal ANPS WW (given the naff weather we have been having so far this year, pin-pulling is becoming the knew knormal) today a suggestion was made that members may wish to try a stick-insect (family Phasmida ) search instead. This follows from the news that the stick insect photographed by Roger on our walk in Stoney Creek Nature Reserve a couple of weeks back was thought to be an undescribed species.  I was up for advancing science but unfortunately the weather forecast didn't improve so no-one else was game to come.  As I was going in to Queanbeyan (and thus passing the site) anyway I went ahead. In the event the number of mm of rain that fell on me exactly matched the number of stick insects I found.  A big, fat round number: 0, zero, nada, zilch.  However there were a few interesting things around. I didn't take any photographs of flowers (feeling lazy) but there were quite a lot of Brachyscomes , several Glycine and one thoroughly confus

No, not about the NSW Premier, but some tales and pictures about invertebrates seen in the past few days. The first tale arose when the small dog became very interested in a small ephemeral watercourse beside our drive.  It trickles over rocks and is full of rank grass and is prime legless-reptile country.  On peering closely, no reptiles were visible but a fairly recently deceased yabbie  was found.  As I didn't have my camera with me an image will have to wait (assuming a nocturnal scavenger has not munched it in the meantime). Here we go: Although it is looking a little 'used' this is due to ants doing what ants do well, rather than, as I expected, Kookaburras, Ravens, foxes and other vertebrate carnivores/omnivores givng their digestions some work. The most interesting aspect of this is that the site of finding is about: 100m horizontally and 5m vertically from the Creek; and 200m in a straight line (at least 300m as water flows) horizontally from our dam. S

Late Breaking news from the Sydney Morning Herald !  It is only temporary but does over-ride much of what follows! This morning I read an early version of an article in the SMH about the proposal to allow friends of the Game Council to use silencers when blazing away in National Parks.  At that time the Premier hadn't ruled silencers out.  My initial reaction was to send an email to the journalist including (the rest was just my opinion on a few things) this: I am also intrigued by the risk assessment that is being noised about.  I wonder what probability is attached to the death of an innocent person using the Parks for the purposes for which they were intended?  My expectation is that it is something like 'low' - which could be 0.1% or 1/1000 - or 'very low'  (say 1/100,000) or minuscule (say 1/1,000,000).  It would clarify what was on offer if the numbers were quoted rather than the camouflaged weasel words. The relevant part of his response was: The risk

The rain event described by my friend Denis Wilson has not visited Carwoola in any force.  Over the past three days we have recorded  26.5mm - just enough to lay the dust and freshen things up. I went out to photograph the rain on the vegetation last evening.  The catalyst for this was seeing a stream of bubbles running down the trunk of a Yellow Box ( Eucalyptus meliodora ) in the bed outside our sunroom.  The bubbles don't quite get to the level of flow at Carrington Falls shown by Denis, but do pile up into foam at the base of the trunk. A little further from the house there are attractive colours in the bark of Brittle Gums ( E. mannifera ).  In many cases the trees are putting on a growth spurt following earlier wet days and shedding their outer bark. Where the bark hasn't been shed a pleasant red colour is shown. The original title of this was was to be " Raindrops keep falling on my leaves" but unfortunately all the images I got on the Sunda

So Arabella was loaded into the parent-mobile and bought out for a trip in the country.  The small dog was very surprised to find a different person being carried around. Perhaps Tammie was intrigued by the new person still weighing a bit less than her.  (Arabella is doing her best to catch up, but the small dog is doing well on the tooth these days and is around 3.5kgs.) It is a pity we didn't do video of this.  We could have called it "Worst example of wriggling by a dog"!  I was delegated to manage the situation and by employing her blanket as a form of straitjacket this was achieved. Memo to self: the beard does need a trim. Here follow a couple of more traditional gooey pictures of a grandchild.  I think it is merely coincidence that she seems to be looking intently in the direction of the dog and scratching her head in puzzlement. With the next one, I am not sure what the clenched fist salute means.  She differs from John Carlos  in a couple of major w

Following our very enjoyable visit last Sunday we were offered a personal tour by our friend Rob.  It was really great and I would really encourage any visitor to take one of the tours on offer! After the heat of Sunday it was pleasant to find the day was cool.  Also cloudy, but as Rob said "There's no rain on the radar!"  We took off to look at a few interesting areas that are not normally visited.  the first plants we really looked at was the Silk Floss Tree ( Celba speciosa ).  When these prickly jobs - from Argentina, Paraguay etc - get up to speed the will be 25m high  x  15m wide!  Between the trees the main ground cover is lucerne.  This was planeted to make up for the 2001 bush fires removing the ground cover and a fair bit of the top soil. Lucerne stabilises the soil and adds nutrients.  These trees are the Weeping Snow Gum ( Eucalyptus lacrimans) from the Adaminaby area. They - or at least one specimen - were flowering.  Did I mention that th